


Change in the Air

by howelleheir



Series: The Fallen White Doors [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Action & Romance, Alien Sex, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brain Damage, Character Death, Gen, Identity Issues, Major Character Injury, Memory Loss, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rough Sex, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-23
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-01-24 14:07:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18573040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/howelleheir/pseuds/howelleheir
Summary: Morau brings Weyoun back to Shi Mar to heal his illness, but that isn't the only thing he has planned.





	1. Shi Mar

Weyoun could remember a time when Shi Mar had been a hub of activity — the cloning facility and all the hundreds of Vorta assigned there; the little temples on corners where fragrant powdered  _ kava _ crackled and smoked on discs of charcoal, and endless strata of handwritten prayers on little squares of white and blue paper covered the walls, stuck in with tiny steel pins from the dish near the altar. He could recall cafes where he and Kilana had met for a meal and a peaceful respite from their respective work, where he sat alone sometimes in the night, watching the way the city's lights seemed to reach into the black sky and almost touch the reeling auroras above. The wide streets which seemed perpetually full of people darting in and out of buildings, standing on tiptoe and calling to one another across the crowd — all built up against the vast forests and the white sheer rock faces that jutted here and there from the treeline.

He could also remember the day he'd been reassigned, how reluctant he'd been to pack his things and leave the pleasant apartment he'd occupied  since he'd been promoted to head researcher at the Shi Mar facility, decades before.

He remembered coming back occasionally over the following lifetime and seeing the city slowly shrink away from the husk of the shuttered facility, empty buildings and cracked pavement being slowly swallowed by the encroaching shrubs and vines as more and more operations were moved to the other side of Iyat Mar until, finally, there was no reason to go back.

Another two hundred years had utterly consumed the formerly-grand city. Shi Mar was a ruin.

Weyoun had woken just as they were about to land — just in time to see the city as Morau took them into a steep descent above the facility's grounds. The scout ship was small enough to land in the clearing behind the facility, coming to rest between two tall banks of trees.

“How are you feeling?” asked Morau. “Up for a walk?”

Weyoun nodded. “I think so.”

He leaned heavily on Morau's arm as they climbed the wide white steps to the facility, his weak legs faltering over the broken stones and the weeds that had taken up residence between them. He looked up at what remained of the building — the crack that had formed shortly after it was abandoned, which ran from the base of the stairs all the way up to the top floor, had widened into a cavernous fissure which split the facility in two, the left side sinking down and the right leaning outward so that the upper floors were separated by several meters both horizontally and vertically. At some point, a fire had broken out. The crevice was rimmed with scorch-marks.

Weyoun remembered how the main entry doors — huge, arched slabs of white stone from Kourahamar — had once stood open to the facility's wide atrium where curated exhibits of the geneticists’ work sat on display. The atrium was still open to the air, but the doors had collapsed on the landing, grey with dust and cracked where their weight had pulled them from their massive hinges. One of them had fallen across the threshold, jammed against the doorway at a sharp angle.

“How...?” asked Weyoun trailing off as his eyes scanned the entry. As far as he could tell, there were only two ways through, and one was almost completely blocked with rubble and the other would necessitate scaling the sheer surface of the fallen door and then jumping into the atrium from the top.

Morau laughed. “We move the door.”

Weyoun shot him an incredulous look. “I suppose you have an excavator handy?”

“Come now,” Morau scolded. “Confining yourself to breaking restraints and blocking disruptor fire is a little limiting, don't you think?”

He stood behind Weyoun, sternum to shoulder blades, and took hold of his wrists, extending their arms out toward the rubble. Weyoun felt an electric warmth spread from his chest down his arms — the same power he'd been occasionally able to manipulate, but focused. Stable. A blue light issued from their joined hands and wrapped around the stone — not a quickly-dissipating bolt, but a bright tendril that coiled and rippled and made the air around it ring with a palpable energy. Even directed and bolstered as his own power was by Morau's, Weyoun's knees shook with the effort, but finally, there was a sound of shifting, grinding rock. The door lifted from the landing and hovered for a moment before coming to rest against the outer wall, leaving swirls of fine dust and an open archway in its wake.

They stepped through, and Morau replaced the door with nothing more than a tip of the head. Seeming to notice Weyoun's wide eyes, he laughed. “You'll get there,” he said. “Just a matter of practice.”

Morau led him down the center staircase to the sub-levels. The floors were scarred in even rows where the gestation pods had once been — hundreds of them on the first sub-level alone. In Shi Mar's prime, the facility had been the main source of both clones and new lines, although it had dwindled to less than a thousand by the end.

Now that they were empty, the series of rooms seemed cavernous and bleak. Their footsteps echoed as they descended from the first lower level down through the second and third, spiralling deeper into the ground. Even when most of his waking hours had been spent here, Weyoun had rarely visited this area. They were headed toward the vault — a sort of genetic library containing samples from every known species of plant and animal native to the planet. Every cloning facility contained such a vault, just in case. It made sense that Morau would hole up there — it was the most secure room in the facility.

Morau stopped in front of the huge iron door at the terminus of the lowest level. He glanced back toward Weyoun, a wary look in his eyes. “You had better stay here for now,” he said. “I don't know how he'd react to you.”

“Who?”

Morau just shook his head. “You’ll see.”

Morau disappeared behind the door. Although the walls were thick, Weyoun could hear his muffled voice, speaking gently, the way other species talked to children. Whoever was behind the door made no reply.

Morau returned after a few minutes and leaned through the cracked door. “I don't think it'll upset him if you come in. I'd like to have prepared you both, but...well, it's easier to show you.”

Weyoun followed, curious and somewhat apprehensive. Morau's apparent nervousness seemed to be contagious.

The vault was surprisingly intact. The walls were lined with small compartments, all of them, as far as Weyoun could see, with their status indicators lit up blue. Each one, he knew, contained a sample from a different species, although they should have been cleared out when Shi Mar was shut down. Somehow, the vault had remained untouched by the same centuries that had devastated the rest of the facility.

The only feature to differentiate this room from its counterpart in any active cloning facility was the bedroll made up on the floor near the far wall, occupied by a body propped up on a cushion.

As Weyoun drew nearer, he was able to discern more of the figure's features, and a now-familiar sense of dread skittered down his spine.

Even with his hair cropped short, deathly pale, out of uniform and staring senselessly, eyes tracking back and forth through the empty air, Weyoun could recognize his own face.

The clone's  _ tchematikar _ exposed his iteration mark, and Weyoun was just close enough to make out the shapes of the glyphs.

_ Morva. _

He shot Morau an uncertain glance, “Tava said—”

“That he was executed,” Morau interrupted. “I couldn't allow that. I took the place of his Discontinuation worker and resuscitated him.” Morau took a long breath. “But, as you can see, it wasn't entirely without complication. His brain is severely damaged. As far as I can tell, he's aware of his immediate surroundings, but his motor skills are limited. He can't speak, but I've had some success with empathic communication, and I've taught him a few signs — he can ask for things he needs. Water, food, a blanket.”

Weyoun stared at Morau, and then at the clone — so thin and pale and vacant. In one small section, his hair was shorn away entirely, all along a sutured surgical wound that didn't look to be healing properly. “Why?” he asked softly. “Why keep him alive like this?”

“That's...not an easy question to answer,” said Morau. “I’m sure you're very invested in the idea that culling the weak is a mercy. I'm not. But that's not all there is to it. You're familiar with the physical defect failsafes introduced in the early fifteenth century?”

“Only passingly,” he said haltingly. “I was out of genetics by then.”

“It causes spontaneous termination in any clone with certain so-called 'prohibited’ gene expressions. Adequate sensory perception, physical strength, advanced psionic ability, reproductive capability — all the  _ Founders’ _ little checks on our autonomy. And every line has the failsafe, but there's only  _ one _ with immunity to it. Right now, I'm not certain which of you is more likely to live, so even  _ if  _ I were in the business of euthanizing one of the few Vorta to break free of the Shapeshifters’ influence, I certainly wouldn't risk the only hope of restoring our people for the comfort of one individual.”

Weyoun sat with that for a long while. His eyes were drawn to Morva in spite of how difficult it was to look at him — then, finally, he turned back to Morau. “‘Restoring our people’?” he asked. “You want us to...what, exactly? Live in trees, forage for food?”

You still  _ believe _ those lies?” Morau asked, an amused smirk crossing his face. He shook his head. “We’ll have to have quite the history lesson one of these days,” he said. “But before we can do that, we have to get you well.”


	2. Remembrance

It had taken months, but eventually, there was a morning that Weyoun woke without pain. After all the treatments and tests, his body had finally adjusted to the absence of the implant that Bashir had pulled out of him.

He stood from his improvised bed. He had taken to sleeping in a gutted lab on the fourth floor — Morau's living space in the vault was too cramped for his taste. Through the window, Kurilayu had broken over the horizon, casting the treetops and the ruins of Shi Mar in beams of blue-white. Although it was early, Morau would certainly be awake, and Weyoun wanted to speak with him, but as he made his way into the hall toward the stairs, his ears caught a strange sound drifting through the complex — a legato, reeling music. It was odd to hear music on his homeworld outside of Kama’ara, where it existed for the benefit of the visiting dignitaries.

He followed the sound to its source, and was surprised to find himself outside of his progenitor’s office. Time had worn it down so that it was only recognizable by its bones and its place in the hall.

Morau was seated at the dusty, broken window, cradling in his lap an intricate wooden instrument, pulling the long bow across its strings, his fingers flying over its neck. Weyoun watched in silent fascination — something about seeing a Vorta playing an instrument, creating, was so uncanny.

It wasn't until the stillness that followed the long cadence that Weyoun realized his cheeks were streaked with fresh tears. His emotional responses had been difficult to control over the past several weeks, doubly so when he didn't expect to have one.

“You understand it now, don't you?” Morau asked, setting the instrument to the side and approaching Weyoun, his head tilted and a bittersweet smile ghosting across his lips as he swept a thumb over Weyoun's face. “Music, I mean.”

Weyoun nodded. “It's like a language,” he said.

“It is a language,” Morau corrected. “It's just one you weren't taught. I could teach you to play — I suspect you'd take to it quite well now that you don't have that implant dampening your senses.”

Weyoun ducked out of his grasp with a dismissive exhale. “I still don't think it was dampening anything. Three months of treatment, and I haven't noticed any difference.”

“You will,” said Morau. “You've only just recovered from the withdrawal. Within a few weeks—”

“Have you considered,” Weyoun interrupted, his voice sharp, “that you might be wrong? That the implant was there for a reason, that we aren't meant to be without it?”

Morau tilted his head. “I've lived without it. For four hundred and sixty years. You may as well ask if the Jem'Hadar are meant to be addicted to the White. You know how the Dominion operates. Did you really think the Vorta were the exception? The one race the ‘Founders’ didn't cripple? You've seen the differences in my abilities and yours, so why are you still denying—”

“Because there's no proof!” Weyoun shouted. “Because every time you make some wild, outlandish claim about our history and I question it, you find a way around answering me.”

Morau's face twisted, halfway between hurt and furious, and he advanced on Weyoun, too fast for him to react, gripped his head tight, thumbs digging into his temples and fingers into his scalp. All at once, Weyoun's vision clouded, and there was a feeling in his gut like he had fallen straight through the floor and deep into the ground beneath, cold and wet and dark.

And then he saw everything.

 

* * *

 

He stared at the mark on the inside of his right arm — the deep black ink a proprietary secret of the Karemma borrowed by the Dominion, and, he reminded himself, impossible to fake. A magnet passed over the skin would confirm its authenticity, turning the mark from black to bright, pure blue.

Tava, seventh. From the moment his predecessor had called him that, something had stuck in his head — the wrongness of it, the displaced feeling of being born the seventh before the fifth had died, the scratching, nagging shadows of his incomplete memory. Even all these months later, he still couldn't think of himself as Weyoun.

He certainly wasn't trusted like Weyoun. Kilana still shared his quarters on the Tenak'talar and in the Capitol under the guise of filial closeness, but he knew nothing short of a direct order from her superiors would have kept her there. The wound of her third iteration's defect had never quite healed.

But Kilana had been absent for two days — something about a lead on a long-cold asset sabotage case she'd worked for Sector Security in Iyat Mar. He remembered the case in the hazy sort of way that was common to the distant memories of Senva's time. Likely a copycat or a coincidence, but she had to be sure, and so she had left Tava alone for the first time in months, and by the second day, the silence of his freedom had begun to wear at him.

He called First Itan'krava up to his quarters. He had lately taken to allowing the First to dress him. Kilana approved of his return to tradition, but he doubted she'd be so happy if she knew that the glide of Itan'krava's fingers over his bare flesh had brought back a memory he was supposed to have lost — those same hands dressing him silently in the Central Command at the beginning of the alliance with Cardassia. And after...that memory was formed mostly by conjecture, but enough had returned that he was sure that it had happened. Dukat's palm silencing him as he fucked him into the divan, the look in his eyes as he'd cleaned up the mess he'd made of him, and after, the bright robe he'd wrapped himself up in, that Dukat had helped him fasten and that had made him feel like the consort of a king.

All of it came back a little clearer every time Itan'krava dressed him, a little stronger, sparking a bottomless, terrifying longing, but this time, Kilana wasn't there, and Dukat had allied himself with his predecessor, and the First was all that remained of the memory.

He swallowed thickly, steeling himself and pulling out of Itan'krava's grasp before he'd even managed to lace the back of his undergarment. His voice was weak and halting as he issued the command: “Remove your uniform and lie down on the floor.”

Itan’krava quirked a brow, but he was obedient. Tava shed the half-fastened tchematikar and discarded it on the floor, standing still for a long moment over the stony body before him, then stepping over him, a foot on either side of his thighs.

Squatting low, he reached out and brushed his thumb over the port on Itan'krava's chest, the empty vial still clipped in. He gripped it and pulled, ignoring the Jem'Hadar’s silent, questioning glance as he tossed it aside.

He reached behind him, to the case on the table.

“Prepare one vial,” he said. White production had been problematic for the past few months, and rations had been drastically reduced. An extra vial was excellent incentive for Itan'krava to keep this to himself.

He plucked the shatterproof tube from the case, freshly filled with White, and snapped it into the port without any of the usual ritual. It felt inappropriate for the occasion.

Itan'krava gave a deep sigh as the first drop shot through the tube and into his neck. Tava took advantage of the moment to reach beneath himself and grip Itan'krava's cock, hard and rough and unmistakably a weapon, not made to give pleasure.

Pain would suffice.

He gasped as he slid down onto it, the burning stretch forcing stinging tears from the corners of his eyes. For a long moment, he could only hold still, bent double, breath ragged, fighting the urge to pull away.

The skin beneath his fingertips was rough and cool, and as his nails dug in, a memory broke over him like a flood — falling back into his bunk on the Tenak'talar, knowing it was too sudden, too rough, that he would bleed and his blood would leave its purple-black stains over the sheets, but needing it so badly that he didn't care.

That one golden thread of memory led him back to every time before — on the station, on Cardassia, the Tenak'talar, the Naprem, in Kama'ara, and the force of each crashed through him simultaneously, pitching him forward and crushing wracking sobs from his lungs, equal parts ecstasy and profound grief.

Itan'krava remained silent and still beneath him, impassive as stone, as Tava's ragged, fitful gasps slowed. He hauled himself up, taking a few stumbling steps to his desk, which he braced himself against as he downed a glass of water. He was bleeding. He could feel it trailing down his thighs, tickling against the insides of his knees and the backs of his calves.

The sound of the door-chime ripped the bottom from his stomach.

“One moment,” he called, shooting Itan'krava a panicked glance. The First had already pulled his uniform back on, and he hurried to help Tava into his own. The second his shirt was laced and fastened, Tava wrenched away impatiently, shouldering on his coat and clasping it as he went to the door.

“Name, department, and title,” he commanded into the com. No one should have access to this corridor other than Kilana, who was on Rondac III, the Founder, who would have called him to come to her, and Damar, who would have shouted something snide through the door by now.

The voice that replied was unfamiliar, but made him uneasy all the same. “Fayun,” it said. “Personnel. Investigator.”


	3. Counterfeit

Morau could feel the clone's apprehension through the locked door, and as palpable as it was, it was almost sickening once that barrier slid open and washed him in its cloying, pallid energy.

He wasn't alone, but the Jem'Hadar would be easy to get rid of. As expected, Morau's old alias had drawn the clone's handler halfway across the sector, well out of his way.

“Return to your post,” he said to the Jem'Hadar as he swept into the room and sat on the edge of the desk chair, leaning forward with his hands loosely clasped until the door shut again, and they were alone.

“What is this about?” the clone asked, barely concealing the tremor in his voice.

Morau pulled a device from his pocket. The clone's face crumpled as he recognized it as a memetic interface drive. He knew the object's presence meant that he would never leave this room.

“I wish there were another choice,” Morau said, hoping the clone understood the sincerity in his voice.

“What—” the clone began, but his voice broke with a shudder. He started again: “What did I do?”

“Nothing,” said Morau, standing from the chair and reaching out to place a hand on the clone's shoulder, but he shrank back. If he thought it would help, if he thought even for a moment that it wouldn't terrify him, that it wouldn't complicate this already-unpleasant task, he would tell him _why_ — that his death might save his people. He settled for a different reassurance. “It _will_ be painless.”

The clone nodded, and his radiating fear waned into a numb half-presence as he brought his hand to his jaw.

“No,” Morau hissed, catching his wrist. He knew where the Dominion had gotten the idea for _that_ technology, and he had no desire to ever watch another Vorta die like that again.

He pressed a hand to the clone's chest, just over his heart, and looked into his face, illuminated by the dim blue glow. Under his fingertips, the racing heartbeat slowed. When it had almost stopped, he reached into the clone's mind, and showed him what their world had been like once — the time of peace he was helping to restore. The clone went limp against his chest, and gave one last, rattling exhale.

Morau lowered him gently to the floor, drove the needle of the memetic drive through his temple, and while the transfer began, he knelt down on the floor and allowed himself to grieve.

So many of his people had become casualties of the Shapeshifters’ wars, and he knew this loss would be the first of many, but it would be worth the cost.

* * *

_Morau is back._

Weyoun heard it in his head as clearly as if it had been spoken aloud. He turned sharply in the direction it had come from. Morva had gotten to his feet — something he hadn't yet done unassisted — and was staring at the vault door.

Morau had been gone for just over a week. He'd told Weyoun very little of his plan; just that he'd thought of a way that Weyoun could gain access to the Rondac facility and that he would return within a week or two with something they needed.

A few silent moments later, he heard the footsteps on the stairs, and the door swung open. Morau was wearing one of his many stolen uniforms, unmistakably that of an investigator. There was a great deal of blood staining the cuffs of his shirt and more under his nails. His face looked grim.

“Get on the table,” he said to Weyoun, dropping his bag on the counter and pulling out a small container.

“Why?”

Morau handed him the open container. Inside were four bloody metallic spheres. A set of security implants. The smallest was the same sort that he had cut out of his own wrist on the station, the rest like the ones Bashir had removed later — an active beacon and three passive devices to store identity and clearance information. “You'll need these.”

Weyoun recoiled. “For _what_?” he asked. “What exactly—”

“You're going to replace your successor.” Weyoun opened his mouth to argue, but Morau held up a hand. “I'm in no mood to debate. Get on the table.”

Numbly, Weyoun obeyed. If he was replacing Tava, then those were _his_ implants, and Weyoun very much doubted that Morau had asked nicely for them and sent him on his way.

Morau loaded the implants into an injection gun and pressed it to his wrist, shoulder, hip, and thigh, depositing them one by one into the flesh with a push of the trigger, a soft hiss, and a slight sting under the skin. He checked each of them with a small hand-scanner before he retrieved another item from his bag — a memetic drive. Weyoun blanched.

“No,” he said. “I don't want that.”

Morau shook his head. “You won't last very long without it. _Months_ of intelligence, routines, protocols, habits, people you're supposed to have met…”

He was right. Weyoun knew he was right, but he still didn't want Tava inside his head, didn't want the uncertainty of where one of them ended and the other began.

“Well then,” he said, “we just won't do it.”

Morau's lips pressed tight together, as if he were holding back a violent rebuke. He took a breath and then spoke, his voice quiet, not a trace of his usual amusement. “You will do it,” he said, “or I will go back to the Alpha Quadrant, find your little Cardassian _pet,_ and I will demonstrate what I had to do to make this possible. Have I made myself clear?”

Slowly, Weyoun nodded, and got to his back on the exam table, staring straight up at the ceiling as Morau inserted the drive into a transfer device and placed it over his forehead. He had only ever experienced a transfer right after activation, before he had any frame of reference for what was happening to him, before he had any memories for the stream of information to be added to. It was by far the shortest he'd ever experienced. There was no need to go over all the memories he already had, so the transfer only included Tava's memories; his entire existence — not quite four months.

Waking in the Rondac facility, his activation, the confusion and disorientation of being given a redacted memetic imprint. Kilana watching over him, overruling his decisions. Broca, who never so much as had an independent thought. The failed mission to kill his predecessor. Damar, being brought in by two Jem'Hadar, a black eye, a bloody cut across the bridge of his nose, and an insolent smirk on his mouth. The interrogation — Kilana had stopped it. Damar was well-liked among the Cardassians, well-respected. It was in their best interests, she had said, to take their chances, get him under their thumb. Broca had quietly stepped down after that. Damar had brought intelligence with him — a resistance forming on Cardassia's outlying worlds, a resistance that had already spread to Cardassia Prime, and at its center — Dukat. Bombings, sabotage, terrorism. The Founder's impatience. Kilana, in their quarters, reading over a dispatch from Rondac III and looking like she'd seen a ghost. How good it felt to finally be alone. And then, the First. A visitor at the door, an investigator. The sinking realization that his freedom had been a test, and he had failed. A death that had felt more like slowly falling asleep, into dreams of vast cities set like jewels in a crown of white-capped mountains, full of music and a people who had never known servitude and who had long forgotten war.

Over it all, a familiar fog, so omnipresent that he'd never noticed it. His mind _had_ changed over his months of recovery, become sharper, more aware. Tava had lived his whole life stunted and drugged, and so had he until recently. So had every Vorta for the last two thousand years.

It had to end.


End file.
